Shusha declared youth capital of OIC for 2024 PHOTO

The city of Shusha, the pearl of Karabakh, has been selected as the Youth Capital of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) for 2024.

Press office of the Ministry of Youth and Sports told Caliber.Az that the selection committee of the international program "Youth Capital 2024" implemented by the Youth Forum of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) unanimously chose Shusha as the "OIC Youth Capital" for 2024.

Deputy Minister of Youth and Sports Farhad Hajiyev and Deputy Head of the Department of Youth Affairs Ulviya Akhundova participated in the 11th meeting of the Executive Council of the OIC Youth Forum.

Shusha is a key city in the Karabakh region due to its geographical location and historical significance as one of the major cultural, economic, and administrative centers of Azerbaijan.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Armenia launched a military campaign against Azerbaijan that lasted until a ceasefire was reached in 1994. Armenia occupied 20 per cent of Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized territories, namely the Karabakh region, including Shusha, and seven adjacent districts. Over 30,000 ethnic Azerbaijanis were killed and one million others were expelled from their lands in a brutal ethnic cleansing policy conducted by Armenia.

The Azerbaijani army restored the country's sovereignty over the city of Shusha on November 8, 2020, during the 44-day war from September 27 through November 9, 2020. Azerbaijani forces liberated more than 300 settlements, including the cities of Jabrayil, Fuzuli, Zangilan, Gubadli, and Shusha, from nearly 30-year-long illegal Armenian occupation. The liberation of Shusha played a crucial role in the retreat of Armenia’s forces and cessation of hostilities in a ceasefire on November 10, 2020. 

On January 5, 2021, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev signed an order declaring the city of Shusha as Azerbaijan’s cultural capital. 

Shusha was declared as the cultural capital of Azerbaijan in order to restore the city's historical appearance, to bring its former glory to it and to reunite it with the traditionally rich cultural life, as well as to promote it in the international arena as a pearl of centuries-old rich culture, architecture, and urban planning of Azerbaijan.